This image is a screen captures I took via PowerDVD and a legal, purchased disc.

Hearers and Doers of the Word

The Sunday Closest to August 31

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

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FIRST READINGAND PSALM: OPTION #1

Song of Solomon 2:8-13 (New Revised Standard Version):

The voice of my beloved!

Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains,

bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle

or a young stag.

Look, there he stands

behind our wall,

gazing in at the windows,

looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me:

Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away;

for now the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove

is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,

and come away.

Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10 (1979Book of Common Prayer):

1 My heart is stirring with a noble song;

let me recite what I have fashioned for the king;

my tongue shall be the pen of a skilled writer.

2 You are the fairest of men;

grace flows from your lips,

because God has blessed you for ever.

7 You throne, O God, endures for ever and ever,

a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom;

you love righteousness and hate iniquity.

8 Therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness above your fellows.

9 All your garments are fragrant with myrrh, aloes, and cassia,

and the music of strings from ivory palaces makes you glad.

10 Kings’ daughters stand among the ladies of the court;

on your right hand is the queen,

adorned with the gold of Ophir.

FIRST READINGAND PSALM: OPTION #2

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 (New Revised Standard Version):

Moses said:

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you.

You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

Psalm 15 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

1 LORD, who may dwell in your tabernacle?

who may abide upon your holy hill?

2 Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right,

who speaks the truth from his heart.

3 There is no guile upon his tongue;

he does no evil to his friend;

he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.

4 In his sight the wicked is rejected,

but he honors those who fear the LORD.

5 He has sworn to do no wrong

and does not take back his word.

6 He does not give his money in hope of gain,

nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

7 Whoever does these things

shall never be overthrown.

SECOND READING

James 1:17-27 (New Revised Standard Version):

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

GOSPEL READING

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (New Revised Standard Version):

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalemgathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,

Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?

He said to them,

Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

“This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them,

Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.

The Collect:

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

…for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness….But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves….Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.–James 1:20a, 22, 27, New Revised Standard Version

and this:

For it is within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.–Mark 7:21-23, New Revised Standard Version

and this:

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life….–Deuteronomy 4:9a, New Revised Standard Version

and this:

Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.–1 Peter 4:8, New Revised Standard Version

Among my favorite television series is The Newsroom, all of which I own of DVDs. Set in a Toronto, Ontario, television newsroom, the series focuses on George Findlay, an amoral (if not immoral) News Director, and his staff, most of which is also weak. People lie to each other constantly, stab each other in the back, and put out a nightly news broadcast with mostly sensational content. If it bleeds, it leads. If it scares, it leads. If it is mindless, it leads. The writing of the series is sharp (drawing even from European art films), there is (mercifully) no laugh track, and the acting is spectacular.

The Newsroom presents a (hopefully) exaggerated view of human foibles, including some of those which contribute to one’s self-defilement. One, alas, does not need to resort to fiction to find examples of destructive and defiling behaviors. Sometimes all one has to do is review one’s own past or even one’s own present.

Checklist morality is the easy and bad way out. Moral living consists of far more than doing X, Y, and Z, and not not doing A, B, and C. Jesus boiled the Law of Moses down to two commandments, both about how we think, and therefore how we act. If we love God fully and love our neighbors as ourselves, we will keep the law. We will want to do right by our neighbors and by God, so we will act accordingly. And, as we read in 1 Peter,

Love covers a multitude of sins.

If we nurture love, we will not feed unrighteous anger.

Anger is a powerful emotion. Sometimes it sustains us in the short term, but it becomes spiritually toxic as time passes. I have reached a point in my spiritual development that anger repels me most of the time. Yes, there is righteous anger, the sort which Jesus expressed and which propels social reform movements. (One should be angry about the denial of basic human rights, for example.) But the anger which fuels much of alleged news programming on television and radio repels me, so I choose not to consume it. I do this in a positive way, not an angry one.

The most effective way to be a hearer and a doer of the word of God in Jesus is to love God fully and and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This is active, not theoretical. This is something we must do daily. What tone of voice, for example, do we use? What do we say, and what do we leave unsaid? What do we write, and what do we leave unwritten? And do we leave our corner of the world a better place, or do we opt for sensationalism and inanity? Do we respect others with our words and deeds?

It is that simple–and that challenging.

KRT

Published originally in a nearly identical form at ORDINARY TIME DEVOTIONS BY KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR on October 14, 2011